Outside Tuscon, Arizona in the Sonora
Desert is AMARC, the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center. Here the
U.S. Air Force mothballs planes until they either need them again or it's time
to salvage them for parts. Whenever the U.S. sells surplus planes to foreign
governments part of the sales pitch is that there will always have a ready
supply of spare parts. Some are turned into pilotless drones and used for
missile target practice.

Just outside Tucson,
Arizona in the Sonora Desert is the famed AMARC, the Aerospace Maintenance and
Regeneration Center. Airplane Graveyard-Bone Yard at Davis Monthan Airforce
Base. The Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center AMARC is where the U.S.
Air Force mothballs planes until they either need them again or it's time to
salvage them for parts. Whenever the U.S. sells surplus planes to foreign
governments part of the sales pitch is that there will always have a ready
supply of spare parts. Some are turned into pilotless drones and used for
missile target practice.

The Airplane Graveyard, is not just a fence around piles of out dated scrap
metal, millions of dollars of surplus parts are salvaged to keep other active
aircraft flying. You can think of this place as a huge warehouse for all types
of spare parts which saves taxpayers millions of dollars every year. Many people
think the government sells flying airplanes to the general public, this is not
true. Anything the government sells, which could cause potential injuries, like
a life raft, pilot helmet, or a flying aircraft will be demilled before it
leaves the base. Demilling which stands for de-militarize, includes slashing
rafts with a razor knife, crushing helmets, or in the case of an airplane
chopping the wings off, or cutting the fuselage into three pieces. Some of the
aircraft stored at the Bone Yard are turned into remotely controlled drone
aircraft like what was done with the F-106 drone program.

There are over 4,000 planes in storage, most now from the Vietnam era.
silent

"It shows the incredible creativity as well as the incredible destruction man is
capable of."

"The airplane graveyard is just so erie,
you almost can't help but feel sadness to such powerful machines be stripped of
their beauty."

Think of the amount of
money the taxpayer originally paid for these aircraft that are now setting in a
junkyard.

The Pima Air & Space Museum located at 6000 East Valencia Road, offers tours of
Davis-Monthan's AMARC Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center.